The present invention relates generally to absorbent articles intended for personal wear, and more particularly to disposable absorbent articles.
Absorbent articles intended for personal wear, e.g., diapers, training pants, feminine hygiene products, adult incontinence products, bandages, medical garments and the like are designed to take in and at least temporarily retain body waste. Diapers, as an example, are typically placed and secured on a wearer using a set of primary fastening tabs, such as adhesive tabs or mechanical (e.g., hook or loop) fastening system tabs, and left in place to absorb insults as well as to contain fecal waste. With the primary fastening tabs secured, the diaper includes a waist opening for receiving the waist of the wearer and a pair of leg openings for receiving the respective legs of the wearer.
The size of the waist opening of diapers is often adjustable using the primary fastening tabs. In one known embodiment, the fastening tabs include a pair of spaced hook fastening components attached to a back waist region of the diaper and a loop fastening component (e.g., a patch of loop material) having a length and being disposed on a front waist region of the diaper for receiving the hook fastening components. Typically, the hook fastening components may be pulled around the respective hips of the wearer and attached generally anywhere to the loop fastening component to selectively choose the size of the waist opening of the diaper. As a result, the waist opening can be selected to comfortably fit the wearer of the diaper when initially placing the diaper on the wearer by choosing the locations on that loop component to which the hook components are fastened.
The fastening tabs provided on diapers are relatively small in the longitudinal direction of the diapers. Rather, they are typically much longer in the transverse direction because, as mentioned above, they are used for pulling the back of the diaper around the wearer and fastening to the front of the diaper. The sides of the diaper are relatively short in length (e.g., from waist opening to leg opening) so control of the sides of the diaper is simple using the small (in the longitudinal direction) fastening tabs provided on diapers.
Training pants, unlike diapers, typically come pre-assembled to more closely resemble conventional underpants. In particular, the front and back waist regions of the pants are attached either permanently or refastenably (such as by a primary fastening system). The sides of training pants, however, are typically much longer from the waist opening to the leg openings and therefore more difficult to manipulate with a tab as small as those used on diapers.
Moreover, the relatively small longitudinal direction of the fastening tabs of conventional training pants limits the range of adjustability of the training pants using the fastening tabs. Typically, the adjustability of waist openings of training pants is provided by elastic waist members in the form of an elastic waist band. Thus, the range of adjustability of the waist opening is limited directly by stretchability of the elastic waist members and of the components of the pants to which the members are attached.
As a result, there is a need for a personal wear article that has a wider range of adjustability in the waist opening of the absorbent article.